Accessing SharePoint Data from Provider-Hosted Apps: Use the Right Context

I have spent the better part of the last two years working with the new app development model for SharePoint 2013. Recently I have focused on building apps that access, manipulate, and interact with data stored in SharePoint Online with Office 365. If you have done any development using the client-side object model (CSOM) for SharePoint, you understand the importance of instantiating the proper ClientContext object to access data in a particular SharePoint site. The ClientContext constructor takes as an argument the URL of a SharePoint site and allows you to access data stored in the Lists collection of the Web associated with it. In this post, I will discuss the various context objects you should use in your provider-hosted app depending on where the data your app needs to access resides and if the user’s permissions need to be considered. If you have been developing apps for SharePoint for awhile now (and even if you haven’t), I strongly encourage you to use Visual Studio 2013 and the Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 – March 2014 Update.

Host webs and app webs

When dealing with apps for SharePoint, you will become familiar with host webs and app webs:

Host web – the SharePoint site to which an app is installed

App web – the special isolated site (a unique app web is provisioned for each installation of the app) where the app for SharePoint’s internal components and content, such as lists, content types, workflows, and pages, are deployed

Note that a provider-hosted app is not required to have an app web, and in fact may not need one depending on your business requirements.

Your app will always have Full Control permissions to its app web. However, your app will need to request (and be granted) permissions by the user installing your app in order to access data in the host web. This is handled through the app manifest.

If your app needs to access data in the SharePoint site where it is being installed, you will be working with a host web context of some sort. As you will see, there are actually two different host web context objects, depending on the app authorization policy you choose.

Life made easy, thanks to SharePointContext.cs

When you create a new provider-hosted app in Visual Studio 2013, you have the option to create a new ASP.NET Web Forms or MVC application to serve as your app’s remote web application. If you are using the Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 – March 2014 Update, you also have the option to convert an existing ASP.NET web application to an app for SharePoint project (really cool!) In either case, you will notice that SharePointContext.cs is added to the remote web application project. This file contains class definitions for SharePointAcsContext and SharePointHighTrustContext, which allow you to create host web and app web context objects based on whether your trust broker is ACS (which it is with Office 365) or if you are on premises. I won’t delve into too much more detail in this post, but Kirk Evans has an outstanding writeup about these classes.

Accessing data in the app web

To access data in the SharePoint app web from your app, use the following pattern:

Note that using JSOM, we still need to construct a ClientContext for the app web before we generate an AppContextSite for the host web, made possible through the SP.ProxyWebRequestExecutorFactory.

A note about the app-only authorization policy

By default, authorization checks in the host web succeed only if both the current user and the app have sufficient permissions to perform the action in question, such as reading from or writing to a list. We are reminded that the user’s permissions are taken into account based on the names of the context and access token objects we use in these scenarios: for instance, CreateUserClientContextForSPHost and UserAccessTokenForSPHost. However, your app has the ability to do something akin to running with elevated privileges using the app-only policy for authorization. Also controlled through the app manifest, the app-only policy is useful when an app doesn’t need or want to consider the permissions of the current user. In Visual Studio 2013, you can specify that your app would like to have the ability to use the app-only policy by checking this box in the AppManifest.xml editor, on the Permissions tab:

That being said, just because your app is granted this permission does not mean that you can use the same host web context or access token as before to automatically leverage it. To access data from the SharePoint host web (taking only your app’s permissions into account and ignoring the current user’s permissions) from your app, use the following pattern:

Remember that in order to use the app-only policy, your app must request and be granted this permission by the site owner who installs your app. Also note that there is no JSOM example using the app-only policy because apps that do not make OAuth authenticated calls (such as apps that are only JavaScript running in the app web) cannot use the app-only policy.

As you can see, the code you write in each of the above scenarios (accessing data in the app web, host web, or using the app-only authorization policy) is identical except for the method or property you use from the SharePointContext class to get the appropriate context or access token. Understanding these subtle differences is vitally important when making sure your app has the ability to access and manipulate the SharePoint data it needs.